Week 10
March 4, 2001 to March 10, 2001 

	Monday March 5,  2001  If any of you are wondering why I have not corresponded with you in the last few days, then you are not into the Russian River Barrel Tasting. This a free event that occurs on the first weekend of March every year since 1978. For the last few years we have participated in the event. This weekend a total of 1000 people visited our winery on Saturday. On Sunday 500 people trudged through three inches of rain to taste our wine and eat potato soup. By it's title you will can understand that barrel tasting means that the offerings by wineries will include "futures" which is all we sell.  Brendan is leaving for Europe tomorrow and won't be back for three weeks. I will have to learn to survive without him (Easy, I will have some quiet time). He did have complete control of the videos this week end and had many new offerings to choose from. I was disappointed that Santana, Woodstock, Tina and Roy Orbison were not shown. Also the offerings were not played loud enough. I know we should make it quiet so potential customers can enjoy our wine, but there was something missing without that blaring. One new video I enjoyed was "The Cranberries/Beneath The Skin/Live In Paris. One of my customers had given me a CD a few years back so I decided to check out this new DVD. Boy I think this Irish group, especially Dolores, is the hottest thing out there. Where have I been?  Thursday March 8,  2001  Some of you can understand what has just  happened to me, but most of you will not. Those of you living out in the country will understand that we are at the mercy of fringe Post Offices. Geyserville is becoming one of the most troublesome. As some of you know if you put up the red flag at the mail box, a letter you want sent in mail will be picked up by the carrier to be deposited as soon as she or he gets back to the Post office.  On Wednesday last week I bought 100 shares of Cisco at 24.75. I thought for long term, that was a good price. Today those shares were sold at 22.75 a loss----Not by me but by Schwab---They did not receive my check and had to pay for the transaction by selling my unpaid stock!!! On Friday last week I put up the red flag, because I was too busy to go into town. I just happened to see our mailman come by so I wandered out to the street and saw him pick up the letter containing my check to Schwab and I then explained to him: "This is important otherwise I would not inconvenience you" I saw my mailman collect that envelope directed to Schwab for those 100 shares. Some how this mailman has misplaced my letter. I know it is the government. I have no recourse.  As you remember I have had trouble with my mail recently. There have been two times when the mail wasn't even delivered. That was the first time in our 22 years here. These people are having trouble, but when it costs me money, I have to make a decision to change. I believe we have no recourse but to have most of our mail sent to a P.O.Box in Healdsburg (assuming they have openings).  I have been tasting a lot of Cabs again lately. I am looking for a 97 Napa or even Sonoma Cab that has guts. I guess when I learned to appreciate great wine I thought that Cab was the ultimate. I have tasted over 30 bottles in the last few weeks including 12 Austailian Cabs. It has been very interesting and have bought some additional bottles, but I am still trying to figure out why I have trouble getting fruit out of most of these wines. Some of my customers try to explain to me that Cabernet does not have to have fruit or that I should be looking for herbal or mineral tones or most often that there is so much French oak that I should not compare my wines. After all these days of tasting cabs I did pull out our 99 Carignan and 99 Aca Modot. These are the two wines that have been too young for even ne to enjoy. Well they were very interesting!! I actually preferred the Carignan. But what amazed me compared to these cabs (I still had 4 open) they had so much fruit. Even the Aca was so fruit driven that it did not seem comparable. I know some of you will not like this, but I have decided to use much more oak in the Aca Modot to see if I can duplicate these high scores that are given to Cabs by Parker and Laube.
	Dave
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